I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about what I enjoy in stories of different genres, rather than wanting to actually write something. I'm tired - at least as of the moment - of writing what feels like the same stories again and again. So I guess, rather unconsciously, I've been trying to find the things that make me excited about writing again.
In my writing yesterday, I mentioned that to me, fantasy is about using magic to help explain the events. It's not just the setting - modern and medieval fantasy share elements with each other, but they're very different from one another all the same. Science fiction is very similar to me. If you go to a library or book store, chances are fantasy and science fiction are shoved together on the same shelves, though anyone who reads them is consistently frustrated by it, because they are incredibly different. But in many ways, that difference comes down to a single element - fantasy uses magic to explain, while science fiction uses science.
I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, though there are definitely some that I enjoy. A lot of the times, the ones that I enjoy more are the ones that don't feel the need to overload on their science. Now, perhaps that's just because I'm more of a fantasy fan, but I find that if the science behind the events of the story are simpler and more relatable, I find the story as a whole easier to follow and more interesting. For instance, I'm not a huge fan of Star Trek. I have certainly seen some interesting episodes, but I frequently find that the constant stream of technobabble just confuses things. They make up problems, and then make up solutions for them, entirely with words that mean absolutely nothing to me.
Compare it to something like the game Parasite Eve for PS1. There is (was? I'm not sure) a scientific theory that states that mitochondria in the cell is a parasite that helps our cells to function in exchange for life. Parasite Eve explores this concept - what if the mitochondria could gain power over the cells and become the predominant force? It doesn't get much more complicated than that. So much so that if you talked to someone who's played the game before, probably the first phrase out of their mouths will be "Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell," because the game says it so frequently. And while it may be a bit silly and over the top, it makes for an interesting and solidly put together story that doesn't take a lot of deciphering to enjoy.
Maybe I'm just a simple guy. I don't think there's a whole lot wrong with that. But, generally speaking, I think if you can make a story interesting without requiring the reader to have a dictionary on hand, that says a whole lot more than putting in every vocabulary word you can think of.
Showing posts with label On writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label On writing. Show all posts
Friday, May 5, 2017
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Hidden
I've been playing a lot of games lately where information about the world is hidden away from the player. And I'm not talking, like, true intentions of characters or organizations or detailed maps or something like that. Like, basic facts about the world that all of the in game characters are familiar with that are just never actually given to the player. I don't find it somehow intriguing to listen to hours of characters talking about things that are part of their everyday lives while I work on piecing together what the hell it all means.
Now, can something like this work? Of course it can. The thing is, most of the time that involves having a character - either primary or secondary - who is in the players shoes, not knowing anything about the world and needing to learn and explore to find it out. An amnesiac, a foreigner, a child - something that helps the player feel like they are not alone in the world. But some games just don't have that, and it makes the world feel very strange and almost spiteful of someone trying to come in and learn.
I can kind of understand why a developer would choose to do so. Listening to extended amounts of backstory or world building can be boring and frustrating when you just want to play the game. Having characters explain things to each other that they should already know doesn't make any sense. They want to let you get into the action, and they want the world to feel natural and organic. But that doesn't mean a whole lot if there's no context to put everything to. What do a character's motivations mean to the player if they involve spouting keywords that mean nothing to us? Organizations with titles and no explanation as to what they do or how they came to power. It's just irritating.
Can you imagine if you came to the United States, with no understanding of its government or infrastructure, and the moment you asked what a president was, the only response you got was "the president"? But everyone around you just kept talking about it as usual, but just refused to answer your questions on the subject. That's not a fun puzzle to solve. It's just irritating.
And yet I see this happen all the time in books, movies, and games. Primarily in the fantasy genre. I mean, I'm not all that smart, but I'm pretty sure fantasy doesn't mean that you get to just make stuff up and never explain it. You just don't have to explain how magic works - it's magic, that's the point. Although you could. And usually that's pretty fun.
Now, can something like this work? Of course it can. The thing is, most of the time that involves having a character - either primary or secondary - who is in the players shoes, not knowing anything about the world and needing to learn and explore to find it out. An amnesiac, a foreigner, a child - something that helps the player feel like they are not alone in the world. But some games just don't have that, and it makes the world feel very strange and almost spiteful of someone trying to come in and learn.
I can kind of understand why a developer would choose to do so. Listening to extended amounts of backstory or world building can be boring and frustrating when you just want to play the game. Having characters explain things to each other that they should already know doesn't make any sense. They want to let you get into the action, and they want the world to feel natural and organic. But that doesn't mean a whole lot if there's no context to put everything to. What do a character's motivations mean to the player if they involve spouting keywords that mean nothing to us? Organizations with titles and no explanation as to what they do or how they came to power. It's just irritating.
Can you imagine if you came to the United States, with no understanding of its government or infrastructure, and the moment you asked what a president was, the only response you got was "the president"? But everyone around you just kept talking about it as usual, but just refused to answer your questions on the subject. That's not a fun puzzle to solve. It's just irritating.
And yet I see this happen all the time in books, movies, and games. Primarily in the fantasy genre. I mean, I'm not all that smart, but I'm pretty sure fantasy doesn't mean that you get to just make stuff up and never explain it. You just don't have to explain how magic works - it's magic, that's the point. Although you could. And usually that's pretty fun.
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Fire
You may have noticed that with a lot of my writing, I have a strange obsession with fire and burning. Honestly, I really don't know what it is - you know how everyone has something they just kind of say when they don't know what else to say? That's kind of what fire is like for me with writing. When I'm running out of ideas, I just kind of go to fire. And that doesn't mean that I go to burning things and destroying with flames - rather, I usually go to some form of controlling fire, or controlling one's self around fire.
And I suppose given just how many blog posts I have done now, I haven't done all that many fire posts, but if you go through and look at them all, they're not all too different. Though I suppose that could be said about a lot of my writing. But like I said, when I write on fire, it tends to focus on those two things. In fact, one of my favorite stories (and one that I really have no idea where to go with) has a main character that controls fire through his guitar. I would love to explore more about him and his friends. The problem is I really don't know what the point of their story is. Hard to push towards a goal when there isn't any, after all.
I really just find something fascinating about fire. I was like that when I was in boy scouts, too - I was never particularly good at building fires, but I loved sitting around the campfire and just staring into the flames, watching the way that it danced around itself, making fleeting images above the wood that faded and disappeared into the night sky, leaving only faint embers that lasted for the briefest of moments. It was beautiful and warming and happy - and yet, at the same time, I knew that it was dangerous to get to close to it, and that given the opportunity, fire could cause mass destruction.
But I guess that's what makes it so cool to me. It's versatile. It can be used to create and to destroy. I mean, hell, I'm learning how to use fire to make art. And I'm not an artist, but that's just too cool of an opportunity to pass up - especially when I already like working with wood. It all just kind of makes sense to me. From blacksmithing, to scouts, to pyrography... Fire is in a ton of my interests. And when I'm playing a game with elements in it? You know I have to go the fire path, even if it's not the best.
So it's just kind of something that's in my head a lot. And when I run out of other stuff, that tends to come in. So I guess it's really not that much of a surprise that I would want to write about it.
And I suppose given just how many blog posts I have done now, I haven't done all that many fire posts, but if you go through and look at them all, they're not all too different. Though I suppose that could be said about a lot of my writing. But like I said, when I write on fire, it tends to focus on those two things. In fact, one of my favorite stories (and one that I really have no idea where to go with) has a main character that controls fire through his guitar. I would love to explore more about him and his friends. The problem is I really don't know what the point of their story is. Hard to push towards a goal when there isn't any, after all.
I really just find something fascinating about fire. I was like that when I was in boy scouts, too - I was never particularly good at building fires, but I loved sitting around the campfire and just staring into the flames, watching the way that it danced around itself, making fleeting images above the wood that faded and disappeared into the night sky, leaving only faint embers that lasted for the briefest of moments. It was beautiful and warming and happy - and yet, at the same time, I knew that it was dangerous to get to close to it, and that given the opportunity, fire could cause mass destruction.
But I guess that's what makes it so cool to me. It's versatile. It can be used to create and to destroy. I mean, hell, I'm learning how to use fire to make art. And I'm not an artist, but that's just too cool of an opportunity to pass up - especially when I already like working with wood. It all just kind of makes sense to me. From blacksmithing, to scouts, to pyrography... Fire is in a ton of my interests. And when I'm playing a game with elements in it? You know I have to go the fire path, even if it's not the best.
So it's just kind of something that's in my head a lot. And when I run out of other stuff, that tends to come in. So I guess it's really not that much of a surprise that I would want to write about it.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Of numbers
Sometimes when I have a dream, I wake up knowing that I have to find a way to make it into a story. Such was the case with Wings, with the novel I wrote this year for Nano, and for the dream I had last night. Sometimes it's a small scene that spawns an entire concept, and sometimes it's a long series of scenes that play out like a movie, and I have to find a way to not only connect them in a logical way, but mold the rest of a story around them. Some things get ditched and altered, and some remain remarkably close to the way they originally appeared in my mind.
It's kind of hard to explain everything that happened in my dream. A lot of it is disconnected, or draws on real life pop culture, but over all it did follow a central main character. I can say for sure that he was a young boy, not necessarily intelligent, but gifted with a strange sight. Everywhere he looked, he could see numbers, for many years seeming as though they were completely random. But with time he learned to connect them, to understand them, and to use them. In fact, there was a couple of lines I remember him saying, the first of which being "The numbers are your desires."
It takes place in a world of magic, though until this boy learns how to utilize these numbers, he is incapable of any meaningful magic. Everyone around him begins to learn how to control the elements, how to fly, how to fight, and he is stuck being plagued by these numbers.
But the numbers, once understood, allow him magic beyond the capabilities of any others. With understanding, he can see the literal fabric of reality, and using the numbers as code, rewrite it in anyway he sees fit. Of course, being the main character, he is fortunate enough to be a pacifist, and to want only to use this power to make the world a better and kinder place. However, he soon finds that he is not the only one who can see the numbers, and that the ability to see and manipulate them can even be taught to others.
This then prompts him, as the main person capable of using this power, to open a new school of magic, which he deems the Guardians. He wishes for them to a neutral party, not to take any sides in combat, but instead serve to enhance the world by pulling the best creations from past and future, studying them, learning not only how to create them, but to improve them as well. Again, when speaking of the purpose of the Guardians, a line that I remember him saying: "A house isn't a home if your neighbors can't knock and say hello."
Now, a lot of this is weird, and very cheesy. Personally, I don't have much of a problem with cheese, but I can also see where someone like this character could make the story less interesting. It's certainly something that I would have to play around with, to see what kind of world I want to create and how to go about it. But I really enjoy the idea. It's almost like a coming of age story for the boy, as he discovers the depth of his powers and how he can use them, and more importantly what he wants to use them for. To witness him stand at the crossroads between the possibilities, and decide where he wants to go and what he wants to do. To me, that is the mark of a good character.
It's kind of hard to explain everything that happened in my dream. A lot of it is disconnected, or draws on real life pop culture, but over all it did follow a central main character. I can say for sure that he was a young boy, not necessarily intelligent, but gifted with a strange sight. Everywhere he looked, he could see numbers, for many years seeming as though they were completely random. But with time he learned to connect them, to understand them, and to use them. In fact, there was a couple of lines I remember him saying, the first of which being "The numbers are your desires."
It takes place in a world of magic, though until this boy learns how to utilize these numbers, he is incapable of any meaningful magic. Everyone around him begins to learn how to control the elements, how to fly, how to fight, and he is stuck being plagued by these numbers.
But the numbers, once understood, allow him magic beyond the capabilities of any others. With understanding, he can see the literal fabric of reality, and using the numbers as code, rewrite it in anyway he sees fit. Of course, being the main character, he is fortunate enough to be a pacifist, and to want only to use this power to make the world a better and kinder place. However, he soon finds that he is not the only one who can see the numbers, and that the ability to see and manipulate them can even be taught to others.
This then prompts him, as the main person capable of using this power, to open a new school of magic, which he deems the Guardians. He wishes for them to a neutral party, not to take any sides in combat, but instead serve to enhance the world by pulling the best creations from past and future, studying them, learning not only how to create them, but to improve them as well. Again, when speaking of the purpose of the Guardians, a line that I remember him saying: "A house isn't a home if your neighbors can't knock and say hello."
Now, a lot of this is weird, and very cheesy. Personally, I don't have much of a problem with cheese, but I can also see where someone like this character could make the story less interesting. It's certainly something that I would have to play around with, to see what kind of world I want to create and how to go about it. But I really enjoy the idea. It's almost like a coming of age story for the boy, as he discovers the depth of his powers and how he can use them, and more importantly what he wants to use them for. To witness him stand at the crossroads between the possibilities, and decide where he wants to go and what he wants to do. To me, that is the mark of a good character.
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Elric Aldaraan
You may have noticed an increasing number of blog posts as of late about a character named Elric and his companions. Chances are if you know me and are reading these posts you already know this, but Elric is the name of my character in the Dungeons and Dragons campaign which I am playing in. The posts about him and his partners are all either retellings of events that have happened in the campaign, or me attempting to establish backstory for Elric. It's not all one hundred percent accurate to what happens in the games - partially because I don't have a perfect memory - but I find them to be a good source of inspiration for writing, and I find doing the writing helps me to explore Elric and really get in his head.
It probably helps that I enjoy the character. I find that I enjoy characters that don't necessarily know a whole lot, and thanks to Elric's many years in the monastery, he really doesn't know much about the real world - or at least what he considers to be the real world. It will be determined which he prefers eventually. It's kinda funny, he spent so long living in an idealistic and religious society that he really dislikes those kinds of things, but he is very idealistic himself. He believes that everyone deserves the choice of what to do with their lives, as long as they are not stopping or hurting others in the process. Eventually he'll see how difficult that can be to maintain. We'll see how he reacts to that.
The hardest part, though, is separating him from me when we're actually playing. There are definitely ways in which I would react to situations that are not the same as Elric would, and in the heat of the moment, it can be hard to differentiate. Moments like that have already happened - having Elric steal back some money that the party was made to pay, for instance. But I also can take those as an opportunity to explore his character. He had a purpose for stealing it, after all - he believed that his partner had been swindled and taken advantage of, and that went against his beliefs. It's not something he would do often, but if any of his friends are being swindled...
Stuff like that that makes an interesting character. And potential future events, as well. Stuff like - what if his ideals made him go against the party? What if, for one reason or another, he believed that the enemy was the one who was truly fighting for the freedom of choice? To me, in my mind, Elric would turn away from his companions if that were the case. Not because he doesn't care for them, but he believes in choice above all. It's an interesting dynamic to consider, and I hope I get the chance to explore it further.
It probably helps that I enjoy the character. I find that I enjoy characters that don't necessarily know a whole lot, and thanks to Elric's many years in the monastery, he really doesn't know much about the real world - or at least what he considers to be the real world. It will be determined which he prefers eventually. It's kinda funny, he spent so long living in an idealistic and religious society that he really dislikes those kinds of things, but he is very idealistic himself. He believes that everyone deserves the choice of what to do with their lives, as long as they are not stopping or hurting others in the process. Eventually he'll see how difficult that can be to maintain. We'll see how he reacts to that.
The hardest part, though, is separating him from me when we're actually playing. There are definitely ways in which I would react to situations that are not the same as Elric would, and in the heat of the moment, it can be hard to differentiate. Moments like that have already happened - having Elric steal back some money that the party was made to pay, for instance. But I also can take those as an opportunity to explore his character. He had a purpose for stealing it, after all - he believed that his partner had been swindled and taken advantage of, and that went against his beliefs. It's not something he would do often, but if any of his friends are being swindled...
Stuff like that that makes an interesting character. And potential future events, as well. Stuff like - what if his ideals made him go against the party? What if, for one reason or another, he believed that the enemy was the one who was truly fighting for the freedom of choice? To me, in my mind, Elric would turn away from his companions if that were the case. Not because he doesn't care for them, but he believes in choice above all. It's an interesting dynamic to consider, and I hope I get the chance to explore it further.
Friday, April 21, 2017
Campaign
Playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends, there's kind of an understanding that, while one person is bring the DM for our current campaign, future campaigns will be run by different DMs - and me being the writer, it's pretty safe to assume that I'll be running the next one. So I've spent a pretty fair amount of time just trying to decide how I would go about that. I need some kind of world, I need to create a vast number of npcs, I need to have a coherent and ongoing plot with branching pathways, but I also need that world to persist around them and to continue on regardless of their actions.
Which made me start to realize that, for me, the best place to start would be in one of my stories. And with fantasy, the favorite story of mine that I have written thus far has to be On Bluebird's Wings - or Wings, as it has been called previously here on the blog. To have players run through a campaign with a story parallel to that of Wings, perhaps running across the characters and choosing to either assist or ignore them. Perhaps this could even explain some of the things that Arianna missed while she was traveling alone.
And what would be especially cool would be if the final boss fight for the campaign was the same as the novel - not exactly, of course, because I plan for Arianna's final fight to not have her be accompanied by a group of adventurer's, but to make a sort of alternate ending where they join together to defeat the walking storm. Speaking of whom, I should really probably give him an actual name.
I think the most challenging part of all of that is going to be to balance things. Arianna isn't particularly strong - she's not a fighter, and while she has an impressive amount of magic, it's not something that's necessarily combat oriented. She can turn into a small bird, she can talk to animals, and eventually I plan for her to learn how to use a bow - and that's about it. In the novel, her final fight will be about outsmarting her opponent.
But in DnD, while that's certainly an option, it's a lot harder to get around a guy who can crush you in his fist - especially if he gets good rolls. And especially having a decent number of players against a single boss, I'll want him to be a challenge, but I don't necessarily want him to be able to completely decimate them in a single blow. Thematically that is accurate, but gameplay-wise that's certainly not fun.
It's gonna take a lot of thought and planning. Probably a lot of winging it as I go. Fortunately I have plenty of time to think about it.
Which made me start to realize that, for me, the best place to start would be in one of my stories. And with fantasy, the favorite story of mine that I have written thus far has to be On Bluebird's Wings - or Wings, as it has been called previously here on the blog. To have players run through a campaign with a story parallel to that of Wings, perhaps running across the characters and choosing to either assist or ignore them. Perhaps this could even explain some of the things that Arianna missed while she was traveling alone.
And what would be especially cool would be if the final boss fight for the campaign was the same as the novel - not exactly, of course, because I plan for Arianna's final fight to not have her be accompanied by a group of adventurer's, but to make a sort of alternate ending where they join together to defeat the walking storm. Speaking of whom, I should really probably give him an actual name.
I think the most challenging part of all of that is going to be to balance things. Arianna isn't particularly strong - she's not a fighter, and while she has an impressive amount of magic, it's not something that's necessarily combat oriented. She can turn into a small bird, she can talk to animals, and eventually I plan for her to learn how to use a bow - and that's about it. In the novel, her final fight will be about outsmarting her opponent.
But in DnD, while that's certainly an option, it's a lot harder to get around a guy who can crush you in his fist - especially if he gets good rolls. And especially having a decent number of players against a single boss, I'll want him to be a challenge, but I don't necessarily want him to be able to completely decimate them in a single blow. Thematically that is accurate, but gameplay-wise that's certainly not fun.
It's gonna take a lot of thought and planning. Probably a lot of winging it as I go. Fortunately I have plenty of time to think about it.
Stupid stories
I love stupid stories. And I'm not talking about stories that don't make sense or are poorly written - I'm talking about stories that are intentionally stupid. Stories that are obvious jokes that just keep going, and have an in-depth explanation involved in them. Entire lores behind jokes, things that you can't help but laugh at as you explain.
The best is when people make full on stories. Not necessarily novels, but full fiction pieces for these jokes. It doesn't happen very often, and especially not well, but when you get that perfect mixture together it's like magic. Telling legends about utter madness like it is an epic tale based down through the generations. Legends of ridiculous fighters, of fast food chains, and of man children fighting for their rights to love people who don't truly exist. Absurdity taken to the extremes.
I think the best part about them is that you're never expecting them. They always pop up at the strangest times, and they catch you completely off guard. I thought about this because of a story a friend of mine recently told me, which may have to write a more detailed story for at some point. The story of the Burger King and Ronald McDonald, and their struggle to defeat one another over the centuries. Tirelessly doing battle, trying to rid the world of one another.
I can hardly believe that anyone would even think of that. I mean obviously they are 'rival' companies, but it's a leap to stretch it out into an endless war with backstories behind each of the warriors. A leap that I adore. A leap that I wish occurred more frequently. It takes a certain level of creativity and madness that more people would be better off displaying. The more often that people express this kind of creativity, the better.
I suppose calling it stupid doesn't help. Very few people want to be considered stupid, after all. But I think that there's a good kind of stupid, the kind of stupid that makes people laugh instead of groan, and these stupid stories certainly fall into the former. And they are intentionally so. Stupid, to make you laugh.
And anything that makes you laugh is a good thing.
The best is when people make full on stories. Not necessarily novels, but full fiction pieces for these jokes. It doesn't happen very often, and especially not well, but when you get that perfect mixture together it's like magic. Telling legends about utter madness like it is an epic tale based down through the generations. Legends of ridiculous fighters, of fast food chains, and of man children fighting for their rights to love people who don't truly exist. Absurdity taken to the extremes.
I think the best part about them is that you're never expecting them. They always pop up at the strangest times, and they catch you completely off guard. I thought about this because of a story a friend of mine recently told me, which may have to write a more detailed story for at some point. The story of the Burger King and Ronald McDonald, and their struggle to defeat one another over the centuries. Tirelessly doing battle, trying to rid the world of one another.
I can hardly believe that anyone would even think of that. I mean obviously they are 'rival' companies, but it's a leap to stretch it out into an endless war with backstories behind each of the warriors. A leap that I adore. A leap that I wish occurred more frequently. It takes a certain level of creativity and madness that more people would be better off displaying. The more often that people express this kind of creativity, the better.
I suppose calling it stupid doesn't help. Very few people want to be considered stupid, after all. But I think that there's a good kind of stupid, the kind of stupid that makes people laugh instead of groan, and these stupid stories certainly fall into the former. And they are intentionally so. Stupid, to make you laugh.
And anything that makes you laugh is a good thing.
Monday, April 3, 2017
Blood
Growing up in an age of visual media has been an interesting experience, because trying to hide certain aspects of life in your stories becomes a lot harder when you can actually see what's going on. In writing, if your intended audience is children or teens, chances are you want to avoid certain subjects - blood in particular comes to mind. As far as text goes, you can say that there is a wound or injury, but if you want to avoid it, there's no reason for you to ever state anything about the blood. In a more adult novel, you might state that blood was seeping to the ground as the rusted and broken piping your character had landed on pierced his side. But for young adults, saying that the pain was intense is more than enough.
That kind of thing is a lot harder with video games, tv shows, and movies. After all, it doesn't really make sense to have a sword stab through a character's back and watch them drop dead without a single drop of blood leaving their bodies. And yet they'll do that, because the sight of blood would just be too much for the kids. Not that, you know, a sword stabbing all the way through their body isn't bad enough already. And yet that's how it will be presented.
Ironically, when making more adult content, we seem to try and do the opposite to compensate for how little blood we showed early on. Games and shows aimed for adults will have enormous, entirely unrealistic splatters and pools of blood any time someone dies or is injured. Their bodies will stagger and stumble, they'll continue to move long after they should have been dead, because it makes things more dramatic and unsettling.
And I don't know if writing has evolved in a similar matter, or if it was later kind of brought back to writing from the more visual media, but I find this is often true with novels nowadays. And I'm certainly guilty of it too - after all, blood is a very sticky, slow moving liquid. It would take a direct blow to a vein to cause a spurt of blood, and even then it is not a continuous thing as it is often advertised. A single spurt, maybe two, and usually caused by applied pressure rather than the simple wound and beating of the heart. Certainly not enough to make a pool.
I'm not sure where we got this idea that that was how things were supposed to be presented. I kind of grew up with it, so for me it's kind of just in my head. But it makes me wonder where it started.
That kind of thing is a lot harder with video games, tv shows, and movies. After all, it doesn't really make sense to have a sword stab through a character's back and watch them drop dead without a single drop of blood leaving their bodies. And yet they'll do that, because the sight of blood would just be too much for the kids. Not that, you know, a sword stabbing all the way through their body isn't bad enough already. And yet that's how it will be presented.
Ironically, when making more adult content, we seem to try and do the opposite to compensate for how little blood we showed early on. Games and shows aimed for adults will have enormous, entirely unrealistic splatters and pools of blood any time someone dies or is injured. Their bodies will stagger and stumble, they'll continue to move long after they should have been dead, because it makes things more dramatic and unsettling.
And I don't know if writing has evolved in a similar matter, or if it was later kind of brought back to writing from the more visual media, but I find this is often true with novels nowadays. And I'm certainly guilty of it too - after all, blood is a very sticky, slow moving liquid. It would take a direct blow to a vein to cause a spurt of blood, and even then it is not a continuous thing as it is often advertised. A single spurt, maybe two, and usually caused by applied pressure rather than the simple wound and beating of the heart. Certainly not enough to make a pool.
I'm not sure where we got this idea that that was how things were supposed to be presented. I kind of grew up with it, so for me it's kind of just in my head. But it makes me wonder where it started.
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Styles
I find it fascinating at times to think about the comparisons between art and writing. Most people consider writing to be an art form, after all, and yet it is so vividly different from a visual medium. One of the few things that they share is that in each, people have their own unique styles in which they do their work - however, I would argue that in writing that is a much more limited and structured thing than it is in art. It is much easier to emulate a writer's style than an artist's, because you can see and replicate the patterns and decisions they make much more consistently.
Style is how we do the things that we do, but it is also the end result of what we do. They're inseparable from each other, though most people will only see half of that. This is much easier to notice in art than writing - even when emulating another artist's style, your own style will distinctively remain within the art, because of the way in which you create. Even if your goal is to replicate something, if you are not following the manner in which it was created, the texture and life of your product won't match up.
This is still true of writing, but it is much easier to fudge the creation process. After all, it's not a matter of pencils versus crayons versus watercolor versus oil paint. It's all words - whether they are written or typed is irrelevant in the end. The process for a writer has more to do with the order in which things are written, what happens during the editing process, and how you think about your characters and their actions and thoughts. But chances are that the more you write, the more you will start to retread old ground, and the more the patterns of your writing will become evident, which is the part of it that is emulated. You can see the kinds of words a writer uses, the kinds of characters they write, what they prioritize in each scene. Those are things that can be copied much more easily than the shine and soul in a drawing's body - there is much less technique to it.
Which always makes it interesting to me when people talk about a writer's style, because in my mind it doesn't mean as much as an artist's does. There are absolutely writers with their own unique style, that's not what I'm arguing - read a single sentence of a Stephen King novel and you know exactly who wrote it. But to say that you can see a person's style in their writing, especially when they are new to writing and are still getting the hang of things - that is fascinating. I don't entirely understand how it happens. And I'm not saying it doesn't - I'm just saying that it is an utterly fascinating phenomenon.
Style is how we do the things that we do, but it is also the end result of what we do. They're inseparable from each other, though most people will only see half of that. This is much easier to notice in art than writing - even when emulating another artist's style, your own style will distinctively remain within the art, because of the way in which you create. Even if your goal is to replicate something, if you are not following the manner in which it was created, the texture and life of your product won't match up.
This is still true of writing, but it is much easier to fudge the creation process. After all, it's not a matter of pencils versus crayons versus watercolor versus oil paint. It's all words - whether they are written or typed is irrelevant in the end. The process for a writer has more to do with the order in which things are written, what happens during the editing process, and how you think about your characters and their actions and thoughts. But chances are that the more you write, the more you will start to retread old ground, and the more the patterns of your writing will become evident, which is the part of it that is emulated. You can see the kinds of words a writer uses, the kinds of characters they write, what they prioritize in each scene. Those are things that can be copied much more easily than the shine and soul in a drawing's body - there is much less technique to it.
Which always makes it interesting to me when people talk about a writer's style, because in my mind it doesn't mean as much as an artist's does. There are absolutely writers with their own unique style, that's not what I'm arguing - read a single sentence of a Stephen King novel and you know exactly who wrote it. But to say that you can see a person's style in their writing, especially when they are new to writing and are still getting the hang of things - that is fascinating. I don't entirely understand how it happens. And I'm not saying it doesn't - I'm just saying that it is an utterly fascinating phenomenon.
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Background
Originally I was going to actually write a fiction piece for this today, but it required more research than I had time for. But it's still in my head, so I want to talk about it, and I'll probably end up writing the fiction tomorrow.
I've never particularly put a lot of thought into the background of my characters - at least not until I've been with them for a while. Trying to decide where a character came from and how they got where they are isn't something that I really try to figure out before the story starts. Occasionally I'll delve into the background of a character and really flesh out how they got to where they are, but it honestly isn't something that I do a lot. The story takes place in itself, and they prove who they are through their actions - more often than not, their past is irrelevant to the present.
Which is pretty counter-intuitive to the way a lot of people think. I imagine this isn't the way people expect a writer to work, and I would be surprised if there were a ton of other writers who designed their characters this way. But it's just kind of how my brain works. The past is written to bolster or explain the present, rather than to be an actual starting point. Trying to do it the other way is very strange for me, because I'm trying to make a basis for a character who doesn't exist yet.
But I want to try and challenge myself to do that. To know more about my characters before I actually start writing the story. To have a place to base their actions and behaviors on, so that they can consistently be a certain way. And when so much of what I love about a character is their growth, it only makes sense to give them a place to grow from.
It doesn't help that I'm not particularly good at coming up with names. A character doesn't really have solidity in my mind until they're named. They're more of just ideas floating around in the same general area - the name is the glue that holds them together. And in my mind, the background starts with their name. "Such and such was..." or "Such and such did..." And maybe that's not a good way of going about it, but it's what comes naturally in my brain. And you can't get better without starting somewhere.
I've never particularly put a lot of thought into the background of my characters - at least not until I've been with them for a while. Trying to decide where a character came from and how they got where they are isn't something that I really try to figure out before the story starts. Occasionally I'll delve into the background of a character and really flesh out how they got to where they are, but it honestly isn't something that I do a lot. The story takes place in itself, and they prove who they are through their actions - more often than not, their past is irrelevant to the present.
Which is pretty counter-intuitive to the way a lot of people think. I imagine this isn't the way people expect a writer to work, and I would be surprised if there were a ton of other writers who designed their characters this way. But it's just kind of how my brain works. The past is written to bolster or explain the present, rather than to be an actual starting point. Trying to do it the other way is very strange for me, because I'm trying to make a basis for a character who doesn't exist yet.
But I want to try and challenge myself to do that. To know more about my characters before I actually start writing the story. To have a place to base their actions and behaviors on, so that they can consistently be a certain way. And when so much of what I love about a character is their growth, it only makes sense to give them a place to grow from.
It doesn't help that I'm not particularly good at coming up with names. A character doesn't really have solidity in my mind until they're named. They're more of just ideas floating around in the same general area - the name is the glue that holds them together. And in my mind, the background starts with their name. "Such and such was..." or "Such and such did..." And maybe that's not a good way of going about it, but it's what comes naturally in my brain. And you can't get better without starting somewhere.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Editting
The second time I participated in Nano, I finished a story for quite possibly the first time in my life. I was extremely excited about it - I had always loved to write, but I'd always ran out of steam before the end of the story. Sure, there were a few small pieces that finished in twenty to thirty pages, but those were always smaller than I wanted, and intended to be parts of something bigger, which of course was never finished. So when I finished From the Sleeping Valley, I couldn't have been happier. Especially because I knew that I would be getting free proof copies as part of the deal of winning Nano.
My original plan was to get my five free copies one at a time, and use each one to continuously refine the story, editing as I went. As it turned out you had to get all five at once, so that plan went out the window, but I still designated one of them as being my editing copy, labeling the inside cover as such. Of course, in my infinite wisdom, I managed to misspell "Editing" as "Editting" which was very much not intentional and wasn't pointed out to me until much later, at which I laughed because it only seemed appropriate.
I have never been very good at editing, which is something I have written about before. It's not quite something that clicks in my brain, and worse yet, I find it painfully dull. I have been trying, ever so slowly, to edit my novel from Nano 2015, and while I like my story and recognize that it desperately needs editing, it's just so painfully difficult to get myself to actually do it. Not to mention I hardly know what to do. I understand fixing typos and correcting grammar and things like that, but taking a sentence that sounds awkward and making it sound better? Or even taking a sentence that sounds alright and making it sound great? That just doesn't really work with my brain. I still try, but I'm not entirely convinced that I'm not making things worse in my attempts to do so.
And I'm still doing the first sweep. By the time I finish, I will have forgotten ever single edit I have made. And I may very well go through a second sweep and unintentionally put things back to the way they were in the first place - that is not something I would put past myself. I'm not exactly sure how to get any better at it, either, other than to keep doing it.
But it's so boring.
My original plan was to get my five free copies one at a time, and use each one to continuously refine the story, editing as I went. As it turned out you had to get all five at once, so that plan went out the window, but I still designated one of them as being my editing copy, labeling the inside cover as such. Of course, in my infinite wisdom, I managed to misspell "Editing" as "Editting" which was very much not intentional and wasn't pointed out to me until much later, at which I laughed because it only seemed appropriate.
I have never been very good at editing, which is something I have written about before. It's not quite something that clicks in my brain, and worse yet, I find it painfully dull. I have been trying, ever so slowly, to edit my novel from Nano 2015, and while I like my story and recognize that it desperately needs editing, it's just so painfully difficult to get myself to actually do it. Not to mention I hardly know what to do. I understand fixing typos and correcting grammar and things like that, but taking a sentence that sounds awkward and making it sound better? Or even taking a sentence that sounds alright and making it sound great? That just doesn't really work with my brain. I still try, but I'm not entirely convinced that I'm not making things worse in my attempts to do so.
And I'm still doing the first sweep. By the time I finish, I will have forgotten ever single edit I have made. And I may very well go through a second sweep and unintentionally put things back to the way they were in the first place - that is not something I would put past myself. I'm not exactly sure how to get any better at it, either, other than to keep doing it.
But it's so boring.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
End of the world
My dad is a huge fan of apocalypse stories - I'm not so much, but I grew up on them, so I have a bit of a soft spot for them from time to time. I don't really understand what his fascination is with the world ending, and why he wants to see it so badly, but it's just what he's always wanting to see. We say 2012 when it came out for pete's sake - god, that movie was horrible. But we sat through the whole thing, even though it didn't take long to realize how bad it was, because it was the end of the world and Dad had to see it.
Personally, I'm more interested in what happens after the end of the world. The way that society breaks down, man made structures are destroyed and overtaken by nature as the years go by and there's no one left to do anything about it. A few people, of course, who were fortunate enough to avoid the tides of war and famine and natural disaster would be around, but they certainly wouldn't have the power to be able to have any impact on the world. They would just be trying to get by. Becoming hunter gatherers once again as the world seemingly becomes anew.
I find that to be the fascinating. What kind of person would you have to be in order to survive in that kind of world? Would you have to force the world to change around you, or would you be the one to bend first? Would the kind of people who aren't set to be in that kind of world with that kind of mindset be killed off, or would they be forced to adapt? How much does it depend on the person, and how much is it just a question of what one will do to survive?
I can see an argument for the enjoyment of apocalypse stories being that they test the boundaries and limits of the human mind and body, but I believe that everything that happens after that would test those boundaries and limits far more. It is one thing to see the world collapsing and failing around you. It is another thing entirely to have already witnessed it and lived to tell the tale. Especially when there is no saying how many people that you know and care about made it through with you.
Games like The Last of Us have incredible worlds like this and explore these well, even if I don't like them as a whole. I want more games that do this well. The whole zombie thing really hurts the concept.
Personally, I'm more interested in what happens after the end of the world. The way that society breaks down, man made structures are destroyed and overtaken by nature as the years go by and there's no one left to do anything about it. A few people, of course, who were fortunate enough to avoid the tides of war and famine and natural disaster would be around, but they certainly wouldn't have the power to be able to have any impact on the world. They would just be trying to get by. Becoming hunter gatherers once again as the world seemingly becomes anew.
I find that to be the fascinating. What kind of person would you have to be in order to survive in that kind of world? Would you have to force the world to change around you, or would you be the one to bend first? Would the kind of people who aren't set to be in that kind of world with that kind of mindset be killed off, or would they be forced to adapt? How much does it depend on the person, and how much is it just a question of what one will do to survive?
I can see an argument for the enjoyment of apocalypse stories being that they test the boundaries and limits of the human mind and body, but I believe that everything that happens after that would test those boundaries and limits far more. It is one thing to see the world collapsing and failing around you. It is another thing entirely to have already witnessed it and lived to tell the tale. Especially when there is no saying how many people that you know and care about made it through with you.
Games like The Last of Us have incredible worlds like this and explore these well, even if I don't like them as a whole. I want more games that do this well. The whole zombie thing really hurts the concept.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Insanity
I beat Final Fantasy XV recently - which was good, not great, but that's not what I want to get into - and doing so has got me thinking about the older games again. I have played all of the mainline titles outside of the MMOs, though I have not beaten them all. There are some that I adore, and some that I can not stand, but even in the ones that I don't like as much, there are things that I can not pretend are not great.
One of those games is Final Fantasy 6 - one of the contenders by most standards for the best in the series, as well as best rpg of all time. I'm personally not a fan. I enjoyed the majority of the game, but there was one specific dungeon that I hated and that ruined the game for me. That being said, it is beyond my capacity to argue that the main villain, Kefka, is not one of the greatest villains of all time. You despise him almost from the moment you first see him. He looks pathetic and laughable, but he is truly evil, and with each encounter he becomes more intimidating.
But the thing that makes him so great is that he's not just evil. He's absolutely insane. He is more than willing to kill his own men in order to kill his enemies - and I don't mean letting them die in battle, I mean poisoning their water supply so that the water will travel down river to kill another village. He truly wants nothing more than to cause chaos and destruction, to attain power to control the world so that all will be broken and scattered while he is a god. And not a god among men, but a literal god. The more times you encounter him, the more you realize that it's not rhetoric or an impossible dream. And in the end, he actually succeeds. He destroys the world, becomes a god, and breaks the lives of you and all of your friends. The world literally becomes little more than ruins.
He is ruthless, psychotic, and loves to toy with you. But, of the many villains you face in video games, he is one of the few that does not go easy on you. The moment he gains more power, he turns on you and throws it in your face. He doesn't hesitate. He only toys when he already knows that he has won. In the final battle his final form isn't something that he has hidden away from you, but is something that he only acquired by becoming a god, at which point he no longer needed to play with you to get his kicks. He discarded you along with the rest of the world. You don't see him in person again until the end of the game.
Sometimes, when I'm trying to write villains, I try to tap into that insanity. You can have intentions behind evil, or you can have a pure drive of hatred and desire of power. But it's a lot harder to do both - so try and do one well.
One of those games is Final Fantasy 6 - one of the contenders by most standards for the best in the series, as well as best rpg of all time. I'm personally not a fan. I enjoyed the majority of the game, but there was one specific dungeon that I hated and that ruined the game for me. That being said, it is beyond my capacity to argue that the main villain, Kefka, is not one of the greatest villains of all time. You despise him almost from the moment you first see him. He looks pathetic and laughable, but he is truly evil, and with each encounter he becomes more intimidating.
But the thing that makes him so great is that he's not just evil. He's absolutely insane. He is more than willing to kill his own men in order to kill his enemies - and I don't mean letting them die in battle, I mean poisoning their water supply so that the water will travel down river to kill another village. He truly wants nothing more than to cause chaos and destruction, to attain power to control the world so that all will be broken and scattered while he is a god. And not a god among men, but a literal god. The more times you encounter him, the more you realize that it's not rhetoric or an impossible dream. And in the end, he actually succeeds. He destroys the world, becomes a god, and breaks the lives of you and all of your friends. The world literally becomes little more than ruins.
He is ruthless, psychotic, and loves to toy with you. But, of the many villains you face in video games, he is one of the few that does not go easy on you. The moment he gains more power, he turns on you and throws it in your face. He doesn't hesitate. He only toys when he already knows that he has won. In the final battle his final form isn't something that he has hidden away from you, but is something that he only acquired by becoming a god, at which point he no longer needed to play with you to get his kicks. He discarded you along with the rest of the world. You don't see him in person again until the end of the game.
Sometimes, when I'm trying to write villains, I try to tap into that insanity. You can have intentions behind evil, or you can have a pure drive of hatred and desire of power. But it's a lot harder to do both - so try and do one well.
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Differences
I find the English language fascinating because of how easily two people can get confused while communicating the meaning of a single word. That's the kind of thing that people hate English for, but I find it incredibly fascinating, because two people can have such different meanings behind the same word, and they're both perfectly valid. And when we're having discussions about those words, we can have an internal understanding of what we think that word means, but it can be difficult to actually express that understanding. We have words, and yet at times we can't find the words to even explain those words. It's such a bizarre experience, but I think it's one that we've all experienced.
One of the places that this applies to the most is when we're talking about other people. I'm not talking stuff like if they're nice or if they're strong or what have you. Tiny things. The difference between someone being cute and beautiful. Sounds simple, right? But a person can be both cute and beautiful - what makes them each thing? What is the difference between a beautiful cute person, and a cute beautiful person? It sounds silly, but it makes a difference. Is it the actions they make that determines if they are one or the other? Their facial features? Body type? Personality?
One could argue that it's personal preference that determines how we view the different people, and that's a valid argument to make. But then why do we use the one word to describe it? After all, we find a person to be cute or beautiful, so there has to be a shared meaning behind cute and beautiful that we feel when we find them that way, right? Even if two people find two completely different people cute, there must be something about the situations that is the same that therefore makes the word still apply in both circumstances.
I'm not going to swing in and give some kind of universal definition, because I really don't have an answer. It is an interesting question, though, and as a writer, one that I will probably spend a lifetime considering. After all, if I want a character I write to appear cute in a person's mind, I should be able to tap into that shared meaning to make it possible. And obviously not everyone's going to find a character cute, no matter how hard I try to make that a thing. But the more people I can get to share that feeling, the better I will have done at accomplishing my goal. Because while I could just say that a character is cute and leave it up to the audience to visualize them in their head, that would be removing any creative freedom I myself have in actually creating the character. And if I'm not writing anything more than that they are cute, it requires the audience to blindly take my word for it. And that back and forth makes for a very bland experience.
One of the places that this applies to the most is when we're talking about other people. I'm not talking stuff like if they're nice or if they're strong or what have you. Tiny things. The difference between someone being cute and beautiful. Sounds simple, right? But a person can be both cute and beautiful - what makes them each thing? What is the difference between a beautiful cute person, and a cute beautiful person? It sounds silly, but it makes a difference. Is it the actions they make that determines if they are one or the other? Their facial features? Body type? Personality?
One could argue that it's personal preference that determines how we view the different people, and that's a valid argument to make. But then why do we use the one word to describe it? After all, we find a person to be cute or beautiful, so there has to be a shared meaning behind cute and beautiful that we feel when we find them that way, right? Even if two people find two completely different people cute, there must be something about the situations that is the same that therefore makes the word still apply in both circumstances.
I'm not going to swing in and give some kind of universal definition, because I really don't have an answer. It is an interesting question, though, and as a writer, one that I will probably spend a lifetime considering. After all, if I want a character I write to appear cute in a person's mind, I should be able to tap into that shared meaning to make it possible. And obviously not everyone's going to find a character cute, no matter how hard I try to make that a thing. But the more people I can get to share that feeling, the better I will have done at accomplishing my goal. Because while I could just say that a character is cute and leave it up to the audience to visualize them in their head, that would be removing any creative freedom I myself have in actually creating the character. And if I'm not writing anything more than that they are cute, it requires the audience to blindly take my word for it. And that back and forth makes for a very bland experience.
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Geography
I was looking at some game stuff today, cause that's what I do with my life, and I found this very well constructed map of the world of one of the series I'm in to, Monster Hunter. It was cool because Monster Hunter bases itself on a series of maps for different hunting areas, but aside from the occasional background image, those areas feel extremely disconnected from one another. But this map took all of those disconnected areas and was able to fit them together between years of games that have only been loosely tied together, creating one contingent world.
But while I was looking at that map, I realized how much thought was put into it, and how many small clues there were in the games that made that construction possible. All of these little details that were slowly and cumbersomely pieced together to make a world with any kind of structure and logistical rules. Things that I never really think about when I'm writing my stories, which makes it difficult to place events and places in any kind of logical system or map. While I'm busy building the characters of my world, I don't give a whole lot of thought to the world itself. And I mean, I love seeing the maps at the beginnings of books that shows the world and where things take place, even if I never actually remember the logistics of any of it. But the way I write, that wouldn't even be possible.
To be fair, that's probably something that you either plan way in advance, or you can correct and modify during editing. For me personally, it would probably work better in editing. Already knowing what kinds of events take place and what general kinds of areas I want them to take place in, I could figure out how that would make sense and change directions accordingly. Place different cities in the north or south, east or west. Build the world around the events, rather than the events around the world. That much planning would just... not work well for me.
But I'd like to have a consistent world like that. Something that has some kind of permanence. Make the world feel like it's alive, and make it a place that people would want to go. Man, if I ever heard something like that. "I want to live in that world." I don't think I could be happier as a writer.
But while I was looking at that map, I realized how much thought was put into it, and how many small clues there were in the games that made that construction possible. All of these little details that were slowly and cumbersomely pieced together to make a world with any kind of structure and logistical rules. Things that I never really think about when I'm writing my stories, which makes it difficult to place events and places in any kind of logical system or map. While I'm busy building the characters of my world, I don't give a whole lot of thought to the world itself. And I mean, I love seeing the maps at the beginnings of books that shows the world and where things take place, even if I never actually remember the logistics of any of it. But the way I write, that wouldn't even be possible.
To be fair, that's probably something that you either plan way in advance, or you can correct and modify during editing. For me personally, it would probably work better in editing. Already knowing what kinds of events take place and what general kinds of areas I want them to take place in, I could figure out how that would make sense and change directions accordingly. Place different cities in the north or south, east or west. Build the world around the events, rather than the events around the world. That much planning would just... not work well for me.
But I'd like to have a consistent world like that. Something that has some kind of permanence. Make the world feel like it's alive, and make it a place that people would want to go. Man, if I ever heard something like that. "I want to live in that world." I don't think I could be happier as a writer.
Monday, November 14, 2016
Struggle
I've been having a rough few days working on my Nano novel - I think the creative drain has been showing through in my log posts as well. I have these really interesting questions I want to both pose and answer, fascinating scenes I want to explore, character depth I want to dive into - but no drive to actually get into them. It's been getting ever harder just to put words down on paper.
I'm worried that the story just isn't good. I made a decision early on to split the narrative between the four different characters, but having certain events happen with characters at the same time in different locations I worry has made the plot too scrambled to follow. I also worry that I've made too much repetition of information, thanks to the different characters relating to the events and knowledge. I've never been much of one for having more than one perspective, but I feel like the way the story is told, it's pretty important. Especially later on, when the characters begin to enter each other's dreams - it would be difficult to have only one perspective when there are four characters, each experiencing four vastly different worlds, fears, and actions. Each having to do their own thing to save one each other.
I can't exactly take a break from writing the novel if I want to finish it - which I do. I've failed to complete three Nanos in the seven years that I've been participating, and I can easily tell you that I have never once been happy about not finishing. I always feel like I have failed in one way or another, and I feel as though that failure is not to my story, but to myself. This is what I want to do, after all. I want to write. I want to share my stories with the world.
But I am going to be traveling for roughly a week starting tomorrow, heading out of country, spending almost an entire day each way on a plane. I hope to be able to spend a good chunk of that flying time working on my novel - we'll see how well that actually works out. But because of the combination of being up in the sky, wanting to actually take some time to relax, and knowing that I will be out and about being a tourist most of the time, I've decided I want to take that time as a break from the blog.
I've said before this isn't something I want to do, but with circumstances being as they are, I feel that if there was ever a time to take a break, now is it. Ideally I won't stop writing - I should be working on my novel - but I hope that not feeling the need to find something new every day to write about will help give my brain some much needed space. I've already asked a friend of mine (who I'm pretty sure is the only one who actually reads this crap - hey, how's it going?) to make sure I get back to writing the blog when I get back, so I feel reasonably certain that this won't be the end of the blog for me. Which is good. While it's been stressful and a challenge at time, I feel that this has all been good for me over the last almost two years, and I'd hate to let it go now.
I'm worried that the story just isn't good. I made a decision early on to split the narrative between the four different characters, but having certain events happen with characters at the same time in different locations I worry has made the plot too scrambled to follow. I also worry that I've made too much repetition of information, thanks to the different characters relating to the events and knowledge. I've never been much of one for having more than one perspective, but I feel like the way the story is told, it's pretty important. Especially later on, when the characters begin to enter each other's dreams - it would be difficult to have only one perspective when there are four characters, each experiencing four vastly different worlds, fears, and actions. Each having to do their own thing to save one each other.
I can't exactly take a break from writing the novel if I want to finish it - which I do. I've failed to complete three Nanos in the seven years that I've been participating, and I can easily tell you that I have never once been happy about not finishing. I always feel like I have failed in one way or another, and I feel as though that failure is not to my story, but to myself. This is what I want to do, after all. I want to write. I want to share my stories with the world.
But I am going to be traveling for roughly a week starting tomorrow, heading out of country, spending almost an entire day each way on a plane. I hope to be able to spend a good chunk of that flying time working on my novel - we'll see how well that actually works out. But because of the combination of being up in the sky, wanting to actually take some time to relax, and knowing that I will be out and about being a tourist most of the time, I've decided I want to take that time as a break from the blog.
I've said before this isn't something I want to do, but with circumstances being as they are, I feel that if there was ever a time to take a break, now is it. Ideally I won't stop writing - I should be working on my novel - but I hope that not feeling the need to find something new every day to write about will help give my brain some much needed space. I've already asked a friend of mine (who I'm pretty sure is the only one who actually reads this crap - hey, how's it going?) to make sure I get back to writing the blog when I get back, so I feel reasonably certain that this won't be the end of the blog for me. Which is good. While it's been stressful and a challenge at time, I feel that this has all been good for me over the last almost two years, and I'd hate to let it go now.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Writing thoughts
I kind of glazed over it the other day, but I think pretty differently when I'm in the middle of a book that I'm writing than I do when I'm not working on a piece. They're thoughts that come and go unprompted throughout the day. The thought of words and stories just kind of pass through my brain, and I think about where I am in my story and what questions remain to be answered or even asked, and I'll make these decisions unconsciously. It's this really cool feeling of building without exactly trying to build that I've never experienced anywhere else in my life. It's inspiring, but it's also scary, because it can make it hard to want to write without having had the thoughts first. But the thoughts don't come unless I've spent time writing. It's almost a vicious cycle, but if I've ever been in one that I wanted to stay in, this would be it.
But it's not necessarily just focused on the story itself. It's subtle, but I look at the world differently as well. I look at the people around me, the places I spend time, the things that I do, and I pay more attention. I pick and choose things, both carefully and precariously. I mix them together. I take this person's name, that person's hobby, that room, this house, his way of speaking, her way of thinking. I put it all together in one brand new person. I take from me the most, because I know myself the best, but the more characters I make, the more inspiration I need. And sometimes I'll take one real life thing and split it up amongst several characters. Little habits. Strange talents. Everything that makes a person who they are, and then I tear it apart and make a dozen new people out of it.
Sometimes it's intentional, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes I make all of those different people at once, and sometimes it's a slow process that happens one at a time, over and over as I continue to create and build and expand. But no matter what you're doing, where you are, where you're going, the story continues to exist in the back of your head as long as you work on it every day. And so the thoughts never stop. You learn more about your characters, their goals, their desires, who they are and who they're going to be. Sometimes you realize that they're destined to die, and sometimes that's scary, and sometimes that's exciting. Because just because they're one of your characters doesn't mean that they're one of the good guys.
It really probably doesn't come as any surprise to anyone that a writer would think this way, and it doesn't come as a surprise to me. I just want to put the feeling into words, because that's kind of how I do. I wish it was something that more people could experience. That shock and awe you get when watching a really good movie or reading a really good book, only it's coming from your own head and coming from your own stories, and it's coming completely at random. That constant feeling of learning. It's exhilarating. It helps me remember sometimes why I enjoy writing in the first place.
But it's not necessarily just focused on the story itself. It's subtle, but I look at the world differently as well. I look at the people around me, the places I spend time, the things that I do, and I pay more attention. I pick and choose things, both carefully and precariously. I mix them together. I take this person's name, that person's hobby, that room, this house, his way of speaking, her way of thinking. I put it all together in one brand new person. I take from me the most, because I know myself the best, but the more characters I make, the more inspiration I need. And sometimes I'll take one real life thing and split it up amongst several characters. Little habits. Strange talents. Everything that makes a person who they are, and then I tear it apart and make a dozen new people out of it.
Sometimes it's intentional, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes I make all of those different people at once, and sometimes it's a slow process that happens one at a time, over and over as I continue to create and build and expand. But no matter what you're doing, where you are, where you're going, the story continues to exist in the back of your head as long as you work on it every day. And so the thoughts never stop. You learn more about your characters, their goals, their desires, who they are and who they're going to be. Sometimes you realize that they're destined to die, and sometimes that's scary, and sometimes that's exciting. Because just because they're one of your characters doesn't mean that they're one of the good guys.
It really probably doesn't come as any surprise to anyone that a writer would think this way, and it doesn't come as a surprise to me. I just want to put the feeling into words, because that's kind of how I do. I wish it was something that more people could experience. That shock and awe you get when watching a really good movie or reading a really good book, only it's coming from your own head and coming from your own stories, and it's coming completely at random. That constant feeling of learning. It's exhilarating. It helps me remember sometimes why I enjoy writing in the first place.
Friday, November 4, 2016
Making shit up
It sounds weird when you say it like this, but when you're a writer, you have to have the unique ability to make shit up. I mean, in a way that's kind of a given. For the most part, in writing a story you're trying to create something from nothing, and you're just taking these words from the aether and putting them together until they mean something. But I think the thing that people don't realize or think about a lot of the time, even when they've been writing for a while, is that you don't always know what's coming next. Sometimes you only know what's coming after the next scene, or what's coming further on down the line, but where you are right now, how you're getting to that part that you do know, you really have no idea what's going on.
And some people can skip around to the parts of the story they do know, and they can keep it straight what happens when and where and how, and that's awesome. But sooner or alter they have to come back to that scene that they skipped over because they weren't quite sure how it was going to go. Sooner or later they have to face something that they aren't already intimately familiar with. And by the time they get around to some of those scenes, maybe they have figured out some of what was happening. But they probably haven't figured it out entirely. And that's when they have to just start making shit up.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you ask me, it's both the most exciting and scariest part of telling a story. When you don't know exactly what's going to happen, and so you're figuring it out as you go. You just start throwing words at the screen hoping they make sense, and sometimes when you look back on them they really don't. They make absolutely no sense. And then sometimes you look back and you're utterly amazed because there's no way that you wrote that, and there's definitely no way that when you were in such a bad spot. It's utterly incredible what you just read.
Nanowrimo is made for these kinds of moments, and reading about other people experiencing them is kind of this big thrill for me when November rolls around. Just a few days ago, I read this great line from a budding author who said that "a few minutes ago, my main character and I both realized that he had been dead for five minutes." And that sounds so utterly bizarre, but it's absolutely a thing that happens to writers all the time, and it's the kind of feeling I strive to experience when writing - especially during Nano. That feeling of "Did that really just happen? Did I really come up with that?"
I love making shit up. It's literally what I live for. And man, I have been doing it for four days now, and I could not feel better about it.
And some people can skip around to the parts of the story they do know, and they can keep it straight what happens when and where and how, and that's awesome. But sooner or alter they have to come back to that scene that they skipped over because they weren't quite sure how it was going to go. Sooner or later they have to face something that they aren't already intimately familiar with. And by the time they get around to some of those scenes, maybe they have figured out some of what was happening. But they probably haven't figured it out entirely. And that's when they have to just start making shit up.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you ask me, it's both the most exciting and scariest part of telling a story. When you don't know exactly what's going to happen, and so you're figuring it out as you go. You just start throwing words at the screen hoping they make sense, and sometimes when you look back on them they really don't. They make absolutely no sense. And then sometimes you look back and you're utterly amazed because there's no way that you wrote that, and there's definitely no way that when you were in such a bad spot. It's utterly incredible what you just read.
Nanowrimo is made for these kinds of moments, and reading about other people experiencing them is kind of this big thrill for me when November rolls around. Just a few days ago, I read this great line from a budding author who said that "a few minutes ago, my main character and I both realized that he had been dead for five minutes." And that sounds so utterly bizarre, but it's absolutely a thing that happens to writers all the time, and it's the kind of feeling I strive to experience when writing - especially during Nano. That feeling of "Did that really just happen? Did I really come up with that?"
I love making shit up. It's literally what I live for. And man, I have been doing it for four days now, and I could not feel better about it.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Side characters
I've talked before about how I'm bad with having multiple characters in a story, and how I tend to keep my number of main characters down because it makes it easier for me to keep track of what's going on. The problem that arises out of that is that I'm not particularly great at making side characters to exist around them, either. Like, I can say that a character is in a crowd of people, but if they had to pick one character to focus on for whatever reason or another, and that character wasn't integral to the plot, I would struggle. I'd want that character to have a purpose to being in the scene, to have a name, to have a history. All of which are things that I struggle with keeping straight in my head as I add more and more to a story. And if I add a character into a scene, well, why wouldn't I bring them back in a later one? I went to the trouble of giving them a name. What's the point of just letting them go after that?
There probably is one. It's probably the fact that it makes the world feel more alive, and like it exists for more than the express purpose of giving the main characters a plane in which to have their story told. I can't really argue with that, because it's true, and the more real the world is, the easier it is to get engaged in the story. But that doesn't make it any easier to make myself do it.
The simple fact that I'm not good at coming up with names is probably a huge part of it. It would be easier to make side characters if I could just pull names out of my ass that didn't sound samey, generic, or completely batshit insane. Those are my three modes when it comes to story writing. Which is why lately I've started to resort to stealing names from people I know, but that's another story.
This became increasingly obvious to me as I started working on my Nano novel this year, which started in a bar. There are all kinds of people in a bar, doing all kinds of things, and who did I name in it? The main character and the bartender, who I have full intentions of making into a secondary character. I could have named a bouncer, or some regulars, or the DJ, or any number of people who were there in passing, but I didn't. I talked very generically about other people to make it seem like there were people around, and then I went on to focus on the main character like I always do.
I suppose that's something that might be easier to fix in editing, to be fair. But it's probably something that I should think about more often.
There probably is one. It's probably the fact that it makes the world feel more alive, and like it exists for more than the express purpose of giving the main characters a plane in which to have their story told. I can't really argue with that, because it's true, and the more real the world is, the easier it is to get engaged in the story. But that doesn't make it any easier to make myself do it.
The simple fact that I'm not good at coming up with names is probably a huge part of it. It would be easier to make side characters if I could just pull names out of my ass that didn't sound samey, generic, or completely batshit insane. Those are my three modes when it comes to story writing. Which is why lately I've started to resort to stealing names from people I know, but that's another story.
This became increasingly obvious to me as I started working on my Nano novel this year, which started in a bar. There are all kinds of people in a bar, doing all kinds of things, and who did I name in it? The main character and the bartender, who I have full intentions of making into a secondary character. I could have named a bouncer, or some regulars, or the DJ, or any number of people who were there in passing, but I didn't. I talked very generically about other people to make it seem like there were people around, and then I went on to focus on the main character like I always do.
I suppose that's something that might be easier to fix in editing, to be fair. But it's probably something that I should think about more often.
Friday, October 28, 2016
Obsession
I've been playing a lot of Dark Souls over the last year, having gotten into the series after playing Bloodborne, and while there's not a lot of story to the games, what is there follows a consistent and constant theme throughout the games. While you travel from world to world, fighting your way through endless hordes of monsters well beyond your capacity to fight and slowly but surely overcoming them and using the souls and blood of your fallen enemies to become ever stronger, you are told repeatedly about a far off goal that no one has ever been able to reach, or be able to move past after reaching it. But we are not like our predecessors. We, as the player, as the hero of our story, push ever onward past where those before us have failed, past the impossibilities of the fight we face, until we are set upon by a choice that ultimately is the deciding factor for our journey.
It's not much of a story. A good frameworking for one, but not much of an actual story. But what it is is remarkably reflective of how the fans of Dark Souls play the games. They don't let the difficulty of the games stop them. They die to the same enemy over and over and over again, and each time they learn a little more until they can destroy that enemy. Some of them will go back again and continue to fight and to learn until they can crush that enemy in the palm of their hands without ever being touched. A rare few will go so far as to learn the entire game in this fashion.
The player and their character are both driven by the same force, which connects them - obsession. The player is obsessed with conquering the game, famous for its rampant difficulty, so that they can say that they are a member of the elite. The character, and everyone in the game's world, are obsessed with continuing. They don't want to die along with their world, and want to push it forward so that their story may continue. They want to be a moving force, rather than to sit idly by as they and everything that they have ever known is wiped away. Both are obsessed with their forward momentum, to the point where anything that pushes them back becomes nothing more than another obstacle to overcome.
And this obsession is what connects audience with world. It whats immerses you into the game, even without a real story to speak of, and makes you feel prideful every time you surpass something and make it to a new area. That sharable, relatable obsession. It's an important point to remember as a writer, because you don't have to make a plotless video game to apply that. It is always applicable. Making your character obsessed with what they are doing will draw in the reader, because they will want to know what comes next just as much as the character does.
It's not much of a story. A good frameworking for one, but not much of an actual story. But what it is is remarkably reflective of how the fans of Dark Souls play the games. They don't let the difficulty of the games stop them. They die to the same enemy over and over and over again, and each time they learn a little more until they can destroy that enemy. Some of them will go back again and continue to fight and to learn until they can crush that enemy in the palm of their hands without ever being touched. A rare few will go so far as to learn the entire game in this fashion.
The player and their character are both driven by the same force, which connects them - obsession. The player is obsessed with conquering the game, famous for its rampant difficulty, so that they can say that they are a member of the elite. The character, and everyone in the game's world, are obsessed with continuing. They don't want to die along with their world, and want to push it forward so that their story may continue. They want to be a moving force, rather than to sit idly by as they and everything that they have ever known is wiped away. Both are obsessed with their forward momentum, to the point where anything that pushes them back becomes nothing more than another obstacle to overcome.
And this obsession is what connects audience with world. It whats immerses you into the game, even without a real story to speak of, and makes you feel prideful every time you surpass something and make it to a new area. That sharable, relatable obsession. It's an important point to remember as a writer, because you don't have to make a plotless video game to apply that. It is always applicable. Making your character obsessed with what they are doing will draw in the reader, because they will want to know what comes next just as much as the character does.
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